At issue is an opinion piece penned last week by Randall Luthi, a former Minerals Management Service director who now heads the National Ocean Industries Association. Luthi accused the Obama administration of classifying all offshore drilling as unsafe, moving “agonizingly slow” to approve new Gulf of Mexico exploration and betting “our energy security on the shifting Mideast political sands.”

But that’s “misleading” and Luthi’s “facts are wrong,” Beaudreau said today in a letter to the editor of Politico. He outlined the new safety rules and other changes imposed since last year’s oil spill, calling them “the most significant advances to responsible oversight of offshore energy development in history.”

In keeping with an administration narrative, Beaudreau also cast delays in permitting new offshore projects as a problem with the industry’s readiness &#151 not the result of foot-dragging at the ocean energy bureau:

“Industry has yet to demonstrate that it has the equipment and systems in place to respond to a deepwater blowout. It is irresponsible to approve new projects before we can answer the simple question: What if there was a blowout? Industry – and our agency – have made substantial progress on this. Moving forward without this critical piece of protection would ignore a key lesson of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.”